US team concludes Saddam had no WMD

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

Financial Times

Published: April 27 2005

The US team investigating
whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction has finished its
18-month search without finding any such weapons, underscoring the
inaccuracy of the intelligence that triggered the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The Iraq Survey Group [ISG] issued its final report this week, saying
its 1,700-member team had found no evidence that Iraq possessed
biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

In October, Charles Duelfer, the former United Nations weapons
inspector who heads the Central Intelligence Agency's ISG, released an
interim report, concluding that Iraq's illicit weapons programmes had been
destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war and by subsequent UN inspections.

That report prompted President George W. Bush to admit that much of the
US intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq was “wrong”. But the Bush
administration dismissed arguments that it was wrong to invade Iraq,
saying Saddam Hussein still possessed the “intention” to develop WMD
weapons.

Administration officials more recently have focused on the transition
towards democracy, including the Iraq elections in January, to play down
the faulty intelligence that led to the war.

“As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as
feasible,” concluded Mr Duelfer in the report. “After more than 18 months,
the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been
exhausted.”

The ISG also found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq had
moved WMD to Syria before the war, which some administration officials had
said was possible.

John Shaw, then a deputy undersecretary of defence, in October said
Russian “units” had helped move weapons out of Iraq to Syria. But Pentagon
officials dismissed the allegations, which were also denied by the
Russians.

Mr Duelfer said: “Based on the evidence available at present, ISG
judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from
Iraq to Syria took place.”

Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has refused
to investigate claims by critics of the Bush administration that officials
politicised intelligence before the war.

Prior to the war, administration officials raised concerns about a
possible link between Mr Hussein and the September 11 2001 attacks on the
US following reports of an alleged meeting between one of the September 11
attackers and an Iraq intelligence officer in Prague.

Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee,
recently criticised the administration over the claims, saying officials
continued to raise the alleged meeting despite a CIA report disputing that
the meeting ever took place.